


Still Falling

by Cottontail



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-02
Updated: 2011-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cottontail/pseuds/Cottontail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A traumatic experience. Danny comes to terms with his connection to Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta, girlnamedpixley.

STILL FALLING

If there was one way Danny expected to end this day, puking his guts out in the back alley behind the emergency room of the Medical Center was not it. It hadn’t even made the list of possibilities.

“Are you okay?” Kono asked, her voice tentative.

“Yeah,” he replied. Although “okay” was a relative word.

Okay as in, he was still alive?

Okay as in, he’d managed to wait to lose his cool until he was outside?

Okay as in, all the blood soaked and drying on the front of his shirt was not his own?

Yeah, he was okay.

The ambulance they’d arrived in pulled away silently. A warm Hawaiian breeze ruffled his hair as he risked standing upright again. It was more of a back entrance than an alley. They stood in an alcove of dumpsters and trash. He didn’t want to think too much about the puddle he’d stepped in. Hopefully it was just water from the recent downpour. Then again, considering he’d just emptied the contents of his stomach on the pavement beside one of the biohazard dumpsters, judging the surroundings felt a bit hypocritical.

A gentle hand touched him. “You want to come back inside?” Kono asked.

Going back in was probably the right thing to do.

He tilted his head back and took in a few lungs-full of fresh air. It was a nice night, the skies had cleared and it was warm. There was a dull rumble of nearby traffic from Punchbowl Street and just beyond that the shrill whine of sirens from a new ambulance with another emergency. He wondered if it would be worse than the one that just dropped off.

“Boss?” Kono nudged. Danny glanced at her. Her hair was pulled back, and loose strands framed her serious face.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s go back in.”

Her small hand tightened on his upper arm. Did she think she could hold him up if he fell? Did she think he _would_ fall? He shrugged her off with a rueful smile and ran a hand back over his hair. “I’m fine,” he tried to reassure. Judging by the half-smile she returned, he hadn’t been too successful.

They entered through the wide glass doors and the sterilized odor of disinfectant and bleached floors washed over them. Danny’s stomach threatened to do bad things again.

A water fountain was strategically placed near the nurses’ station, and they stopped so he could rehydrate and get the bad taste out of his mouth.

Medical personnel in blue scrubs milled about the disturbingly long white hallway with clipboards and various medical implements. A couple of empty stretchers were loitering about, waiting for occupants.

His vision tunneled towards the end of the hall; the open waiting area where Chin stood tall and strong, in contrast to the drab furnishings and dim lighting. There were just a few other occupants. An older couple looked up at Danny and Kono as they entered and exchanged alarmed looks before returning to their styrofoam cups of coffee and year-old Reader’s Digests.

Danny sat heavily on a couch and dropped his head in his hands, rubbing at his eyes. It felt like the air conditioning was on full blast or something. “It’s cold in here,” he muttered.

Chin sat close to him. “I think that’s just you, brah.”

“Oh.” Danny gave a short laugh. “Great.”

Kono settled on the other side of him.

“The doc said he’d send someone out to give us an update as soon as they had something to report,” Chin said.

Danny shrugged a shoulder, just to acknowledge he’d heard the words.

A fish tank burbled softly from a corner of the room.

There was blood on his shoes.

–––

“I called the governor,” Chin said. “She said to keep her updated.”

Danny watched the fish across the room as they swam from one side of the tank to the other and back again.

“I also called his sister,” Chin continued. “Left a message for her to get back to one of us.”

Danny thought about Steve’s sister. She was sort of a disaster. She probably wouldn’t call back.

“You should get out of that shirt,” Kono suggested.

He looked down at his blood-soaked shirt and tie. The one Grace had given him for father’s day.

“Into what? I’m not going home to change until I hear he’s okay.”

Chin and Kono exchanged glances in one of their silent conversations. “I’ll take care of that,” Chin said. He was up and out of the room before Danny’s brain could process a response.

“Do you want a coffee or something?” Kono asked. She seemed uneasy and Danny felt a twinge of guilt for not being a better example of a superior right now. He should be holding things together. He should be the rock here.

“No, thanks. I’m good.” He tried to reassure her with a smile again but it felt incredibly forced.

Kono returned it. Bless her.

“I thought you were shot too,” she blurted out.

It wasn’t difficult to see how she could have been confused. There had been two shots with exactly a two-second interval between them.

“No. That was all him,” he replied. He tried not to replay the incident so soon, but once his thoughts went down that line there was no turning them around. He was trained to memorize details in the midst of violence. When everyone else had adrenalin pushing them to run for cover or grab loved ones and flee, his mind was stopping to take note of the number of suspects, clothing, weapons, license plate numbers.

It had been early evening, just after the rain. He and Steve were walking in a downtown crowd looking for Chin and Kono, who were up ahead of them by at least a block. They were doing surveillance on a suspected drug kingpin and his small flock of cronies. It wasn’t supposed to turn into anything. It was just a surveillance mission.

Danny still wasn’t convinced the shots had even come from the group they were tracking. They had to be an outside source. They were too well aimed. Hit the target too perfectly. A sniper.

What the fuck?

It had all been so fast. He hadn’t been able to process it like every other scene he’d been on. Once the shots were fired Steve went down and the crowd turned into chaos.

He rolled his head on the back of the couch and stared up at the dim florescent ceiling lights. “You always know this kind of thing is going to happen eventually,” he said.

Kono tilted her head, hair fell across her eye and she tucked it behind her ear.

“What we do, you know?” He continued quietly, “One of us is going to get seriously injured at some point. This stuff happens; we’re cops. I just didn’t expect it would be him.” He waived a hand absently and let it drop back to his lap. “He’s usually so far ahead of the rest of us with that Navy SEAL, commando, special ops, crap. He sees this stuff before it even happens.”

“But he’s not bullet proof,” Kono said, pointing out the obvious.

“No,” he reluctantly agreed. “But he’s strong. I mean how many times has he been in the hospital one day and out the next? He probably just needs some blood pumped back into him, a few stitches… He’ll be fine.”

Kono remained silent.

A nurse came in and exchanged whispered voices with the older couple. Kono chewed her bottom lip and watched them get up and leave with the nurse. Sometimes Danny took Kono’s tough-guy-in-a-tiny-female-body bravado for granted and forgot she was still a rookie.

He cleared his throat. “Hey, I’m sorry if I lost it back there. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Out behind the hospital just now? No problem.”

He chuckled, the numbness inside melted just a fraction. “No… Well, yeah, that too, but I was talking about back at the scene. I’m usually more level-headed in crisis, you know?”

“I know.” She turned her attention back to him. “I know that. I’ve seen you. This was different. You’re close to him. I understand.”

 _Close to him._ Danny mulled the words over and over from every direction until they lost all meaning.

They were close. Steve had orchestrated that from the start. He’d invaded Danny’s living space and announced he was going to be his partner. Latched right onto the beloved nickname that only Danny’s daughter had used. That alone had been an obvious psychological move to make Danny feel more at ease around him. Danny had seen that for what it was and still allowed it to happen. Once Steve had that foothold he’d advanced on every other facet of Danny’s life until he was entrenched.

Steve invaded any semblance of personal space Danny might have. They were always sitting close, standing close, walking close.

When the shots hit he’d been close enough to fall into Danny; to pull him to the ground. For just a fraction of a second Danny had seen shock in Steve’s eyes, but it disappeared just that fast, replaced by Steve’s frustratingly calm exterior. Even as he lay there bleeding to death in Danny’s arms. Danny had tried to stop the bleeding but it was impossible so he’d turned his attention to keeping Steve conscious. He’d chanted Steve’s name over and over. When that didn’t work, he’d begged and pleaded.

“He lost a lot of blood,” Kono said. “A lot.”

Danny glanced down at himself. He was a mess.

––

In the men’s room he balled up his shirt and stuffed it in the trash. The tie he wound up into a tangle and pressed into his pants pocket. Maybe something could be done for it. In the mirror he was a pale, unshaven ghost; shadows smudged beneath his eyes.

Unfortunately, Chin had returned from a trip to the hospital gift shop with an oversized Hawaiian shirt. Black with little blue palm trees spread across it like a disease.

“You’re kidding me,” he’d grumbled when he pulled it from the bag.

Chin held his hands out defensively. “Hey, it’s all they had. Be glad I didn’t get the one with the rainbows.”

“I hate this place,” Danny muttered, shoving it back into the bag. He stormed out of the waiting room.

Steve would never let him live it down.

If he ever woke up.

The bathroom was cold and too bright. He washed his hands until the water stopped running pink then doused his face in cold water, sliding his fingers back through his hair.

In the hallway he stopped outside the door they’d taken Steve through and looked in the small windows, but there was nothing to see. Just more closed doors. He fought down the overwhelming urge to shove the door open and storm in there. Demand an update.

When he returned to the waiting room Chin and Kono were standing before the giant floor-length window, looking out at the city lights together.

“No news yet,” Chin informed.

“What is the fucking problem? They can’t send an intern out to let us know? He’s been in there for like half an hour already.”

“Well, I’m going to get some answers,” Kono said and walked purposefully from the room. Danny felt momentarily sorry for whoever she might descend upon out there, then remembered that they’d been sitting here for too long, not knowing if their friend was dead or still clinging to life.

He paced the perimeter of the room. The crappy couch, the old stained chairs, the toy box of used toys, the yucca plant that might have been plastic, Chin at the window, the oblivious tropical fish, and back to the couch.

He hated hospitals.

Chin leaned against the windowsill and crossed his arms on his chest. “You’re looking maika`i in the shirt, brah.”

“Fuck you.”

––

Another hour later they got answers. Sort of.

“He’s still critical. It’s touch and go. There were two bullets, both in his abdomen, it’s a miracle he made it to the hospital without completely bleeding out. His vitals are holding for the moment. We’re going to keep an eye on him for the night and hopefully they’ll stay that way, but I can’t promise anything right now.”

“Hopefully?” Danny looked from the doctor to Chin and Kono then back again. “I’m sorry, maybe I misheard you. You just spent a couple hours pulling two slugs from his guts and he lost a few gallons of blood, he might be okay or he might not be okay, but _hopefully_ he’ll still have a heartbeat in the morning?”

“Danny,” Chin hushed.

“No.” Danny waved him off. “I want to be sure I have this straight, because I have to call his sister now, and I just want to be sure I have it all down. Should I tell her that her brother might be dead in the morning but _hopefully_ he won’t be?”

“Detective Williams, I understand this is difficult–”

He laughed. “Difficult? This? No, this is easy. What gave you that impression?”

Kono was giving the doctor apologetic glances.

Chin wrapped a strong hand around Danny’s bicep. “Let’s go for a walk, huh?” He suggested in his calm, deep voice. Danny shook him off.

“I’m fine.” He ran his hands back over his hair and did another circuit around the waiting room. The doctor actually stood by, patiently waiting for him to regain his composure. The problem with Hawaii was that everyone was so damn patient and understanding. It wasn’t normal.

“Can’t you do anything else? There must be something.”

“I’m sorry. It’s up to time now.”

All three of them stared at him like he might implode or fall to the floor in fits like Grace used to do, and that would be fine with them because this was Hawaii and they were understanding.

Danny huffed and looked away. How could there be nothing now but time?

He made another circuit and returned to stand in front of the doctor.

“I want to see him,” he demanded.

“Of course. Give us a few more minutes. I’ll have one of the nurses come get you.”

He sat heavily on the couch, head in hands. This was a nightmare. Like the time Rachel was rushed to the hospital six weeks before her due date and he’d spent the next two days pacing the maternity ward while they dripped drugs into her system to stop the contractions. At least at the end of that hell there had been Grace.

What would he get at the end of this?

He called Steve’s sister.

 _“Hey, this is Mary. Here’s the beep.”_

He left a ridiculous message.

“Uh, Mary… It’s Danny, Steve’s partner. Listen, I didn’t want to have to leave this kind of thing on a voice mail but… Well, you aren’t calling us back. Steve was shot and it’s pretty bad. He’s been in surgery for a few hours. I guess they’re hopeful… Maybe. Fuck, I don’t know. Look, we’re at Queen’s Medical Center. If you want to see him you need to get here.”

––

The last time Danny had seen the inside of a critical care room it was to get statements from a witness before she died. Steve had been with him.

This room was small, crowded with a bed, monitors, machines, nurses and doctors coming in and out, and a chair for one visitor.

Steve was too still. Too pale. Too many gadgets hooked up to him. The room was too quiet.

The nurses had balked at the invasion of three visitors at once, so Chin and Kono were brief. They each stuck their head into the room just long enough to see that Steve was still breathing. Beyond that there wasn’t exactly much to do. They escaped with parting words about going to find food and bringing some back for Danny.

He didn’t care what they might bring back because his body had no interest in food. Sleep, maybe.

He pulled the chair close to the bed and watched Steve lay there unconscious. Steve’s eyes were perfectly still beneath closed lids; there was no REM. His dark lashes were like ink against the pale shadows under his eyes.

How many times had he gone to pick Steve up for work in the morning and thought he looked too tired or haunted? Sometimes it seemed like Steve didn’t sleep at all. Danny suspected the mysterious toolbox had some play in it. He didn’t ask about it anymore. Once he’d offered to help Steve go through it, to examine all the evidence in there and maybe offer a fresh perspective. Steve gave him a casual inexplicable smile and waved the offer away.

“You have enough to deal with.”

“What? What do I have? I have work, and a daughter every other weekend. What else do I have?”

Again with the smile that held some mystery, some puzzle Danny couldn’t piece together, no matter how many times he called Steve on it.

“Let me get a better grip on it all, then I’ll let you take a look,” Steve said.

That and every other frustratingly indecipherable thing his partner had done stretched before him as he sat in the critical care unit watching Steve’s heartbeat blip on a monitor opposite.

Sometime after midnight Mary bothered to showed up; disheveled, wrinkled, and distressed.

“What happened?” She asked, her hands gripped the bar at the foot of Steve’s bed.

Danny blinked at her abrupt appearance and cleared his throat. “Uh… I don’t know. A sniper. No warning.” He tried to wave a hand in the air to express how out of the blue it was, how unexpected, but nothing could demonstrate that, so he let it drop.

She tore her eyes from her brother’s still form and fixed them on Danny. “I can’t believe this. Our father just died. I mean, this just can’t happen. He’s going to be fine, right? He’s going to wake up?”

Exhaustion and pent up emotion wouldn’t let his brain form an appropriate response. He could only stare at her and wonder why she didn’t look like her brother. Why were they so opposite? How screwed up was Steve’s childhood?

“I don’t--I don’t know, Mary. He’s pretty bad.” He gestured to the bed, the tubes and wires, the blips on the monitors. “I don’t know,” he repeated more softly, not entirely sure she heard.

She glanced again at her brother then back to Danny.

“Weren’t you with him? How come you weren’t backing him up or whatever the hell you do for him?”

“Backing him up?” He tilted his head. Was she accusing him of causing this? Had there been something he missed or failed to do? Had there been clues or signs?

Mary was waiting for a response. All he could come up with was, “I’m sorry.”

She continued to stare at him and Danny couldn’t entirely read her, but something in her presence shifted and softened.

She walked around the bed and placed a hand on Steve’s chest; barely touching. “When we were kids he was always ending up in the hospital. I got jealous from all the attention it got him. Like he deliberately did stupid daredevil crap just to get hurt, so dad would notice him, you know.”

He didn’t know, but he nodded. “Sounds like Steve.”

Minutes passed as they watched Steve be unconscious. One of the nurses entered and glowered. “Only one visitor at a time. You’re lucky we’ve allowed you to remain in here at all, Detective Williams. The rules are 10 minutes per visitor, but apparently you have friends in high places.”

Danny sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It took everything in him to say his next words. “Do you want to stay with him, Mary? You’re the next of kin. I can go.”

She stared at him, blinking from beneath the blond hair hanging in her eyes. “Um, no. No, I’m not good at this kind of thing. I’ll go crazy just sitting here. I have to go smoke. He’d probably want you here anyway.”

She kissed her brother’s temple and left.

Another hour passed while Danny’s tired brain processed her last words.

Chin and Kono checked in again and cajoled him into getting up and leaving the room just long enough to eat.

“Come on. It’s Dim Sum from Wong Lee’s,” Chin baited.

Danny tried to argue. “Seriously? Just the thought of food makes me want to regurgitate what is left of my stomach on the floor.”

Kono pulled an ace. “I want to sit with him. I have things to say to him.”

He couldn’t deny her that opportunity and reluctantly left with Chin.

It was 2:00 in the morning and he ate half an egg roll in the waiting room under the watchful gaze of Chin Ho. Steve’s sister was outside with the biohazard-dumpsters, chain-smoking. For a brief moment he considered joining her. If anything could lure him back into the habit this would be it.

He resisted and visited the men’s room one more time before returning to the ICU where Kono was waiting, looking exhausted and ready to hand sentry duty back over.

“Why don’t you go get some sleep,” he suggested.

“Why don’t you?”

He laughed softly. “Touché.”

Back in the room Steve was still breathing. The blip on the heart monitor seemed to slow, or maybe Danny was just so tired that his own internal clock was making reality more sluggish.

Nurses came in and out a little more often.

It occurred to Danny that if Steve was gone he may not be able to remain in Hawaii as a fully functional adult. Even with Grace still here. She was making more and more friends. She wasn’t going to want to spend whole weekends with him much longer. It pained him to think of leaving her here, but the thought of staying was almost worse. If he went back to Jersey he could fly her out for the summers. Maybe every other holiday.

How had his life come to this?

Sleep dragged him down, heavy and dreamless.

When he woke a burning strain tangled the muscles in his neck from where he’d been pressed against the wall. He extracted himself from the pretzel-like position he’d folded into. How had he slept at all?

The clock on the wall said it was early morning. The blips were still going on the heart monitor and he breathed a sigh, allowing himself to glance at Steve.

He was awake. Eyes only half open, but awake and watching Danny.

Danny’s breath caught in his chest and concern for stiff and aching muscles evaporated.

“Hey,” Danny whispered, leaning closer, touching Steve’s arm, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. “You’re awake. How you doing?”

The eyes blinked and there was the smallest movement to his mouth.

“What, you’re smirking? What is wrong with you? You’re on death’s door. I was planning your funeral, you know?”

Steve just lay there, half-lidded gaze fixed on Danny. Probably trying to stay alert under all the drugs they were dripping into him. He was still too pale, too gaunt and shadowed.

Danny tried to remember back to the one time he was in an ICU, waking up from a trauma he couldn’t remember but that friends and family had insisted was a torture session with a mob boss. To this day he still didn’t remember it. His brain just erased it all. But the broken bones and bruises had to have come from somewhere.

“Steve,” he started and faltered, wanting to say something significant. Something to express every staggeringly revelational emotion he’d gone through in the past twelve hours.

The words wouldn’t come. So he just sat there and returned Steve’s drugged gaze and said, “You look like crap.”

Steve hinted at another small smile. “Sweet,” he whispered in a painfully gravely voice.

An answering grin came over Danny.

Everything was startlingly contrasted from the previous night. Fresh new nurses came in and out with bright smiles. Steve was awake and attempting to make snarky remarks, despite having enough morphine in his system to put a horse down.

Life wasn’t ending. It might actually be starting again.

His eyes closed, and Danny thought that might be all he would get out of him for the time being.

Except it wasn’t.

Steve’s lips barely moved. “Danno,” he breathed. So softly that Danny had to lean close to be certain he’d heard it right.

“What?”

“Nice shirt.”

/end


End file.
